Exceptions are events that occur during the execution of a program and disrupt the normal flow of control. They typically arise due to unexpected conditions or errors, such as invalid user input, division by zero, or a failed file operation.

Most programming languages provide mechanisms to handle exceptions, allowing developers to write code that can respond to and recover from exceptional conditions. This enables you to maintain the integrity of your application and provide meaningful error messages to users.

In C++, exceptions are handled using a combination of try, catch, and finally blocks. The try block contains the code that might raise an exception, the catch block handles the exception, and the finally block contains code that will always execute, regardless of whether an exception was raised or not.